Crossing with Alejandro Escovedo
By Brittany Rotondo
Rating: Outlawed
The latest release, The Crossing, is songwriting veteran Alejandro Escovedo’s mercurial storybook and sure to be the most quintessential of the veteran’s catalog, out today on Yep Roc Records.
The 17-track album is appropriately parallel to current times and deals with immigration both of the heart and home. Literally and figuratively all over the map, The Crossing explores exile through feedback and familiarity. “’The Crossing’ has parts of everything I’ve done and everything I want to do,” Alejandro explains. “Lyrically, I say a lot of things I’ve never said, that I held back on…”
Recorded at an Italian farmhouse with the all-instrumental band, Don Antonio, and co-produced by Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine), this tell-tale testimony is superbly designed around the troubadour’s distinct and diverse tenure. Escovedo has played alongside the likes of Bruce Springsteen, The Sex Pistols, John Cale and on and on and…
“This says more about me than any of my records without it being a record about me…” explains the songwriter.
The album features sultry saxophone and plucking nylon strings, amongst thee as per usual gritty guitar work that’s trailed nearby since Escovedo’s early days with the punk-rock band, The Nuns. There’s also a modern look through Cohen-colored glasses on tunes like “Silver City,” a twinkling piano duet with Joe Ely. Another petal is album single, “Sonica USA,” which features the singer’s personal hero, MC5’s Wayne Kramer. The album cut, “Teenage Luggage,” sees Stooges Raw Power player, James Williamson, deliver another ode to the singer’s safety pinned past.
The LP is already on the radar of Rolling Stone, Billboard, and National Public Radio (NPR), with NPR even dubbing it the ‘finest of his career.’ There’s a splash of punk and poet greats, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Octavio Paz, pale passes, lost innocence, identity and introspection, revelry and what feels like a universal jukebox overload.
“We all become history when we make the Crossing…” I’m sure listening to this trip across oceans, you will be too.
The Crossing is available for pre-order here: https://lnk.to/thecrossing
Listen to the track, “Something Blue” from The Crossing below.
